Bush Vows to Aid Poland’s Reforms : President Greeted Warmly; Pledges to Back Economic, Political Growth

President Bush, greeted warmly by thousands of Poles and the newly elected Polish Parliament, pledged Monday to provide U.S. support for economic and political reforms designed to help push this Communist country toward a democratic system based on free enterprise.

But Bush, treading cautiously as he carried his campaign for a free and open Europe into the heart of the troubled East Bloc nation, assured Communist leaders that he is supporting a home-grown reform process and is not trying to stir up trouble.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III, reporting on Bush’s separate closed-door sessions with longtime Communist leader Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski and Premier Mieczyslaw Rakowski, said the President made it clear that “there is no effort here to divide or to disrupt, no hot rhetoric or exhortations.”

Help, Not Aggravation

Bush and other U.S. officials here, concerned that Polish authorities might interpret his actions as interference, repeatedly stressed that the President is interested in helping--and not aggravating--the situation as Poland grapples with a deep economic crisis and still unfolding political reform.

Jaruzelski, in a toast at a state dinner for Bush, pledged that Poland has embarked on its new path “for good.”

“The recent parliamentary election offers an opportunity for principal political forces to take a broad part in the system of the functioning of the state,” he said. “It also calls for co-responsibility for its destiny, its well being, its position in Europe and in the world.

“At the same time, it is a great historical experiment. Its success is a great opportunity for Poland,” he said.

As Bush’s motorcade approached the 17th-Century Radziwill Palace where the state dinner was held, crowds lining the street shouted “Down with communism!” and “Jaruzelski must go!” and “Long live Bush!”

But for all of Bush’s promises of help, the debt-relief program he unveiled in a speech to Parliament fell far short of Poland’s hopes. It emphasized that economic reform and recovery “cannot occur without sacrifice.”

And the Parliament, the first freely elected legislature in Eastern Europe in 40 years, applauded only once during that part of Bush’s speech detailing his six-point economic package. The applause came when the President said he would ask Congress to provide $15 million to help clean up pollution in historic Krakow.

The entire package pales by comparison to a three-year, $10-billion aid program that Lech Walesa, leader of the Solidarity labor and political reform movement, is seeking from the West.

Walesa plans to formally propose his program to Bush today when the President visits his home in the port city of Gdansk, headquarters of Solidarity.

Bush, encouraging the still-tenuous rapport between Communist and Solidarity officials that led to the recent parliamentary elections, praised both sides at a luncheon he hosted for them Monday at the U.S. ambassador’s residence here.

About 80 people, including at least 25 Solidarity members, attended the event. Bronislaw Geremek, leader of the Solidarity opposition party in Parliament, sat beside Bush at one table, with Jaruzelski seated beside the President’s wife, Barbara, at an adjacent table.

‘It was Rather Strange’

After the lunch, at which Bush and Jaruzelski exchanged warm toasts, Janusz Onyszkiewicz, a member of Parliament and Solidarity spokesman, said, “If you take into account that a year ago I was in prison, it was rather strange” to be at lunch with the Communist leader.

Onyszkiewicz was one of hundreds of Poles arrested during the repressive earlier years of Jaruzelski’s regime, which imposed martial law and moved to neutralize Solidarity in December, 1981, little more than a year after the union was formed.

Solidarity was officially outlawed in the autumn of 1982. U.S.-Polish relations plummeted in the aftermath of these events and did not begin to improve until the Polish government released all political prisoners in 1986.

Although relations had improved enough for Bush, as vice president, to visit Poland in 1987, the continued legal bar against Solidarity and what the State Department called “the Polish regime’s brutal handling” of strikes in 1988 resulted in more arrests and kept relations at a low level.

With Communist officials having re-legalized Solidarity last spring and agreed to so-called round-table talks that led to the June 4 election and Solidarity’s control of the Senate, Bush told the Parliament, “The regime is moving forward with a sense of realism and courage in a time of great difficulty and challenge.”

At the same time, the President took pains to praise other institutions: Parliament for advancing pluralism, Solidarity for being “deeply committed” to institutions in Poland that will serve all of its people and the Roman Catholic Church for serving “as a source of spiritual guidance and unity in these turbulent times.”

“To be here with you on this occasion is proof that we live in extraordinary times,” Bush told Parliament. “The power and potential of this moment,” he said, was first made clear to him when he saw a newspaper photograph of Jaruzelski and Walesa “shoulder to shoulder” at Parliament’s opening session July 4.

Members of Parliament applauded Bush’s 30-minute speech only half a dozen times--mostly when he mentioned the country’s move toward democratic reform--although he paused several times, apparently expecting applause that never came.

In a tacit acknowledgement that Bush’s aid package is relatively modest, Brent Scowcroft, the President’s national security adviser, said: “I think the practical impact is as much political and psychological as it is substantive. And that is the very fundamental step into the political future, into political pluralism, and a determination and a dedication toward the economic reform that has to go along with it.”

Package of Proposals

Members of Parliament listened in silence as Bush rattled off his package’s first four points, which proposed that:

-- The seven major industrialized democracies, meeting at the economic summit in Paris this weekend, move quickly to take concerted action in providing increased Western aid and technical assistance to Poland.

-- Congress provide a $100-million fund to capitalize and invigorate the small but growing Polish private sector and that “parallel contributions” be encouraged from the other economic summit nations: Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Japan and West Germany.

-- The World Bank be encouraged to move ahead with $325 million in “economically viable loans” to help Polish agriculture and industry “reach the production levels they are so clearly capable of.”

-- The Western allies be asked to support “an early and generous rescheduling of Polish debt.”

Bush said he will discuss the debt-rescheduling proposal with his economic summit colleagues in Paris, and if they agree to join in offering liberalized terms, they could provide deferral of debt payments amounting to about $5 billion.

Not until Bush reached the fifth point--the $15-million proposal for aid to Krakow, where Bush said pollution is so severe that “priceless monuments are being destroyed”--did members of Parliament applaud.

His final point was an announcement that the United States plans to establish a cultural and information center in Warsaw and that Poland will be asked to establish a similar center in the United States.

President and Mrs. Bush were cheered by several thousand Poles, many of them waving American flags, when they began their day in Warsaw with a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Many in the crowd sang “America the Beautiful” before the Bushes arrived, and as the pair left the monument, a crowd of about 200 Poles shouted “Sto Lat! “ Polish for “100 years!”--a form of saying “Long live!”

Another crowd greeted Bush warmly for a wreath-laying ceremony about a mile away at Umschlagplatz, the square on the edge of the former Warsaw Ghetto, which was the site where more than 300,000 Jews were loaded aboard trains and taken to Nazi German death camps in 1942-43.

Smaller Crowds

The crowds here were much smaller than the huge throngs that turned out for Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev when he visited Warsaw a year ago. But the Communist Party organized the crowds for Gorbachev and played up his visit in advance in the party-controlled press.

Although U.S. officials had predicted that large crowds would turn out for Bush, they insisted they were not disappointed that the crowds here were relatively small.

Bush is expected to be met by a much larger and more demonstrative crowd when he visits Gdansk today.

Walesa, in an interview with the Associated Press, said of Bush: “I am fond of him. He is a high-class politician, a great intellect, quite straightforward, a fantastic President.”

‘AMAZING’ LUNCHEON: Poland’s political foes dine with the President. Page 10

BUSH’S SCHEDULE

10:10 a.m.--President and Mrs. Bush depart Warsaw for Gdansk.

11:25 a.m.--Arrive Gdansk.

11:45 a.m.--Arrive Oliva Cathedral for tour of cathedral and meeting with Bishop Tadeusz Goclowski.

12:45 p.m.--Arrive at home of Lech Walesa for private luncheon.

2 p.m.--Join Walesas for a wreath-laying ceremony and remarks by President at Solidarity Workers’ Monument.

3 p.m.--Arrive Westerplatte Memorial. Greeting by Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski. Wreath-laying ceremony.

4 p.m.--Arrive downtown dock. Official greeting with Gdansk city leaders.

4:35 p.m.--Arrive Gdansk Airport. Depart for Budapest, Hungary.